"Distich" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... verse, distich, lyric, elegy, eclogue, idyl, madrigal, epic, ode, georgic, cid, rondeau, epilogue, epigram, elegiac, roundelay, dithyramb, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... less than the words of God himself: Ego autem dico vobis: diligite inimicos vestros. If you speak of evil thoughts, turn to the Gospel: De corde exeunt cogitationes malae. If of the fickleness of friends, there is Cato, who will give you his distich: ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... firmness of fibre is excellently well exemplified in the woodcock and the partridge. The former flies most—the latter walks; the wing of the woodcock is always very tough,—of the partridge very tender hence the old doggerel distich,— ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... lord," she laughed, with a tolerant protest in her voice, "you keep up the credit of your house right nobly. How goes the distich? My mother taught it me upon the bridge of Avignon, where also as here in Scotland the ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... a small farmer who played the fiddle well. The boy is said at the age of ten to have carved over the door a Latin distich, which, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... the house of Austria acquired the seventeen provinces, and by the latter, Spain and America; all which centered in the person of Charles the Fifth, son of the above-mentioned Archduke Philip, the son of Maximilian. It was upon account of these two marriages, that the following Latin distich was made: ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... suppose that this bird, in those countries where it was first celebrated, had really some natural fondness for the rose; or perhaps for some insect which took shelter in it. In Sir W. Jones' translation of the Persian fable, of "The Gardener and Nightingale" we meet with the following distich. ...
— Zophiel - A Poem • Maria Gowen Brooks
... followed of a savage wolf, in pursuit of a beautiful girl, trying to pounce upon her as he wished to devour her. This was the burden of the distich: ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... sable, pierced of the field, a crescent for difference. After him came another varlet bearing a banner, on which was painted a grotesque figure in a half-military, half-monastic garb, representing the "Earl of Poverty," with this distich ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Epic Hexameter The Distich The Eight-line Stanza The Obelisk The Triumphal Arch The Beautiful Bridge The Gate ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Virgil. There is a tale, reported by Donatus, that Vergil once anonymously wrote up on the palace gates a distich in praise of Augustus, which, when nobody was found to own it, was claimed by a certain versifier Bathyllus, whom Caesar duly rewarded, A few days later, however, Virgil again set in the same place a quatrain each line of which ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... the Looe River (which doesn't count), but an ancient earthwork, known as the Devil's Hedge, which stretches across country from Looe up to Lerryn. Who built this earthwork, or when he did it, or for what purpose, no one can tell; but the Looe folk will quote you the following distich,— ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... proud at having overcome the difficulties of the Greek language in his later years, he invented a collar, on which were engraved the names of twenty-three ancient and modern poets, and to which was attached a cameo representing Homer. On the back of it he wrote the following distich: ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... and most elaborate poem in the volume, under the title of "Resolution and Independence." The poet roving about on a common one fine morning, falls into pensive musings on the fate of the sons of song, which he sums up in this fine distich. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... I., A.D. 365. In the illustrations of The Baptistery, Parker, Oxford, 1842, which are re-engraved from the originals in the Via Vitae Eternae, designed by Boetius a Bolswert, the figure of "Occasion" is always drawn with the hair hanging loose in front, according to the distich. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... that port, Sir, I expect your gazette, what the beaux esprits are saying, what they are doing, and what they are singing. Any sober intelligence from my sequestered life is all you have to expect from me. I have scarcely made a single distich since I saw you. When I meet with an old Scots air that has any facetious idea in its name, I have a peculiar pleasure in following out that idea for a verse ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... and didactic verse, or satire, took first place. Blank verse was tabooed as too prose-like; so, too, were the enjambed rhymes. A succession of rhymed pentameter couplets, with the sense complete in each couplet, was set forth as the proper vehicle for poetry; and this unenjambed distich fettered English verse for three-quarters of a century. In the drama the characters must be noble, the language dignified; the metrical form must be the rhymed couplet, and the unities of time, place, and action must ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... much like a caution, and a soldier's motto should urge to daring. So we'll none of that. What do you say to the distich in honor of your great ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... children of her own body, 7 sons and 9 daughters, of whom one had no issue, 3 died young—the youngest was slain at Newport battle, June 20, 1600. Her grandchildren, in the second generation, were 114; in the third, 228, and in the fourth, 9; so that she could almost say the same as the distich doth of one of the Dalburg family of Basil: 'Rise up, daughter and go to thy daughter, for thy daughter's daughter ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... myself, "This is another proof positive." Then I said to him, "And how couldst thou fall in love with one thou hast never seen?" He replied, "Know that I was sitting one day at the window, when, lo! there passed by a man, singing the following distich: ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... M. Edouard Fournier ('L'Esprit des Autres', sixth edition, 1881, p. 288), is simply the readjustment of an earlier quatrain, based upon a Latin distich ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... wayward rhythm and abrupt lyrics of the opening of Macbeth. The tone is quite familiar;—there is no poetic description of night, no elaborate information conveyed by one speaker to another of what both had immediately before their senses—(such as the first distich in Addison's Cato, which is a translation into poetry of "Past four o'clock and a dark morning!");—and yet nothing bordering on the comic on the one hand, nor any striving of the intellect on the other. It is precisely the language of ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... with little art composed, Is one good sentence in a distich closed. These points, that by Italians first were prized, Our ancient authors knew not, or despised; The vulgar, dazzled with their glaring light, To their false pleasures quickly they invite; But public favor so increased ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... hand palm is said to portend the reception of a gift; which is rendered more certain if the advice in this distich be followed:— ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... known as the Imtizj el-Faslayn, or "Mixture of the two Seasons"—autumn and winter. The storm is expected to blow three days from the Azyab (south-east) or from the Shirs (south-west). The qualities of the several winds are described in the following distich:— ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... immigrants get such a wage as that. The two young Scots are the picked men of the crowd. Five shillings a day and "all found" is the ordinary wage for an agricultural, and though some are worth more, new-chums are generally held to be worth a good deal less for their first year. The distich— ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... the fashion set by the Roman writers,—then the eighteenth century deluged us with ill-natured witty epigrams of the like brief form. It was not until comparatively modern times that our Western world fully recognized the value of the distich, triplet or quatrain for the expression of beautiful thoughts, rather than for the expression of ill-natured ones. But now that the recognition has come, it has been discovered that nothing is harder than to write a beautiful poem of two or four lines. Only great masters have been truly ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... compression and brevity in narration, unattainable in any language but the Greek, the following distich was quoted: ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... made under the direction of General Wade, in grateful commemoration of its benefits, placed a stone seat on the top of a hill, where the weary traveler may repose, after the labour of his ascent, and on which is judiciously inscribed, Rest, and be thankful. It has, also, the following sublime distich: ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various |
